Tag: home ownership

The City of Richmond, California has been abandoned and cast adrift by all those partners who might logically be expected to support local governments facing severe challenges to the local economy and the real estate market. Into the void stepped the private firm Mortgage Resolution Partners (MRP) peddling a grand solution to solve a prolonged

Many cities, especially the old manufacturing centers hardest hit by economic transformation and demographic shifts, are developing and implementing strategies to attract new residents and new investment. Options that have been or are being deployed to once again grow these cities include targeting immigrants and knowledge workers (“creative class”) as well as place-based initiatives focusing

A number of discussions were held during NLC’s Congress of Cities on the topics of housing, housing finance and home mortgage foreclosures. From these discussions a picture emerges that is hopeful at one level but deeply troubling at another. Despite the improvements in the housing sector in the form of sales prices, construction permits and

Imagine my surprise at how quickly the attention paid to mortgage borrowers suffering through foreclosures, short-sales and default notices is quickly abandoned as good news continues to arrive in the form of rising home prices and sales. As with wars, famines, natural disasters and celebrity meltdowns, issue fatigue is finally sweeping the mortgage foreclosure crisis

Political leaders at the state and local levels in California have delivered not one but two aggressive efforts to address the home mortgage foreclosure crisis. One effort, the Homeowner Bill of Rights, is likely to be a powerful stick which will help borrowers negotiating a loan modification from nearly all banks and mortgage servicers. The

Perceptions seem to be changing but there remains an unfortunate bias against renters. In a recent essay in the Wall Street Journal (May 4, 2012) author Daniel Gross [Better, Stronger, Faster: The Myth of American Decline and the Rise of the New Economy] offers this characterization. “In the American mind, renting has long symbolized striving

In a country that cannot adequately house all of its citizens, both government and private-sector actors will bulldoze more than two million homes in the time before us. Implemented on a vast scale already thanks to dollars from the Neighborhood Stabilization Program (NSP), the pace of demolition will quicken as the winter months recede. It

Housing has always been complicated; it’s just that most folks never really noticed until the decades-old pattern of increasing home construction and increasing home values came to a blinding, crashing halt. Now the complexity is abundantly apparent – rent or own, access to credit, overleveraged mortgage loans, accurate risk underwriting, affordability, proximity to employment, patterns

I’m supposed to want a rambling four bedroom colonial with a two-car garage on a cul-de-sac, given my demographics of age, marital status and educational achievement. Big surprise: that’s not what I want. Seriously, who actually wants to get in the car every time there is a need for a loaf of bread, a light

Like this:

For all the talk about reform of the mortgage finance system, the anticipated changes to Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae are likely to be rather modest. In the run-up to Secretary Geithner’s end-of-January deadline to offer a proposal to Congress, only two options are under serious consideration to support the goal of ensuring long-term liquidity